Welcome to COM 674!

About Me

Introductions

Dad Joke

  • Why did the nearsighted man fall in the well?
  • He couldn’t see that well!

The Class

Programming provides exciting opportunities for social scientists

  • Digital data is exploding and programming is required to do research at scale
  • Algorithms mediate more and more interactions and understanding programming can help us to analyze them
  • Computational methods let us do new things
    • NLP
    • Simulation
    • Large-scale experiments
  • There is value in “thinking like a computer”

Goals

  • Learn basic programming
  • Be able to collect and visualize data from the web
  • Present computational research
  • Read and evaluate computational social science research

This is an intense “bootcamp” intended to teach the basics of skills used by computational social scientists

  • It’s going to be intense! :)
  • But we can do it!
  • Week 1: Python for Everybody
  • Week 2: Pandas, visualizations, and APIs
  • Week 3: Data cleaning, version control, etc.
  • Week 4: Work on final project

Day-to-day

  • Example paper
    • One person will present each day + lead discussion
    • Others will skim
  • Lecture
    • Recorded lecture on coding topic
    • Notebook to follow along - download and run each day
    • Class time focused on counfusions + Coding Challenges
  • Coding Challenges
    • Random “cold calling” for reviewing solutions
    • 5-10 minutes in small groups to prepare
  • Let me know what isn’t working

Synchronous classes

  • 1 PM - discussion of example paper
  • ~1:30 - review of concepts/homework questions
  • ~2:30 - Co-working / office hours
  • OH by appointment

Coding Challenges

  • Exercises from the book
  • Jupyter Notebooks
  • Suggested approach:
    • Try on your own
    • Work with a partner
    • Ask questions on Discord
      • Surround code with three backticks (```)
    • Look up solutions (where available)

Final Project

  • Default option
    • Jupyter notebook
    • Methods + result section of paper
  • Replication?
  • Do what is best for your future goals

Project Milestones

  • Final project
    • Really quickly identify a dataset and general plan (Week 1)
    • Project planning doc (Week 2)
    • Project presentation + report (Week 4)

Grades

  • Goal is learning
  • Two self-assessment reflections

Resources

Wiki

  • Schedule
  • Links to readings
  • Slides and videos may be from older versions of the class
    • I will try to stay 2 days ahead

Brightspace

  • Readings
  • Example Projects

Discord

  • Post questions and help each other
  • Synchronous meetings
  • Office Hours

Anaconda / Jupyter Intro